George Webbe Dasent

Sir George Webbe Dasent, D. C. L. (1817–1896) was a British lawyer, translator of folk tales and contributor to The Times.

Life

Dasent was born 22 May 1817 at St. Vincent, British West Indies, the son of the attorney general, John Roche Dasent. His mother was the second wife of his father; Charlotte Martha was the daughter of Captain Alexander Burrowes Irwin.

He was educated at Westminster School, King's College London, and Oxford University, where he befriended classmate J.T. Delane. After graduating from university in 1840 with a degree in Classical literature, he was appointed secretary to Thomas Cartwright on a diplomatic post in Stockholm, Sweden. There he met Jakob Grimm, at whose recommendation he first became interested in Scandinavian literature and Norse mythology. He published the first result of his studies, an English translation of The Prose or Younger Edda (1842), followed by a translation of Rasmus Christian Rask's Grammar of the Icelandic or Old-Norse Tongue (1843).

Returning to England in 1845, he became assistant editor of The Times under his schoolmate Delane, whose sister, Frances Louisa, he married in 1846. Dasent's connections to Prussian diplomat Christian Charles Josias von Bunsen has been credited with significantly contributing the paper developing its foreign policy. While working for the newspaper, Dasent still continued his Scandinavian studies, publishing translations of various Norse stories. He also read for the Bar and was called in 1852 by the Middle Temple, and was admitted to Doctors' Commons as an advocate the same year.